It was pleasing to turn around a slow start and make a profit in the end last week (ensured with a handy 3.35 winner on Sunday night) in Rotterdam, New York and Buenos Aires and we move on to week eight, which has events on clay, indoor hard and outdoor hard.
I talked about the conditions in my outright preview and as far as tournament trends are concerned Rio is the place to look for underdog winners, with 35% of dogs winning in its five years on the tour.
That puts it inside the top-20 for underdog winners on the tour and Marseille and Delray Beach are about average on 29% each in that regard.
The slow conditions in Delray Beach mean its last six years on tour have only produced an average of 34% of matches featuring a tie break (not that many more than Rio’s 29%) and Marseille’s pacy indoor surface has seen 44% of its matches feature a breaker in the last half dozen years.
It’s a less than inspiring card at the Open 13 to begin the week with, as they have only three main draw matches on Monday, and they all look likely to be won by the favourites.
Denis Kudla is 5-12 win/loss all-time at main level on indoor hard and his career hold/break total is a good 9% worse than that of Mikhail Kukushkin (based on Kuku’s last 50 main level matches on indoor hard).
Kukushkin also has a 3-0 career series lead over Kudla and is in decent enough form right now, so I’m not tempted to back Kudla there.
Antoine Hoang has showed some good form lately and started his main level career on indoor hard well in Montpellier, but one would think that Gilles Simon would have too much experience for the 23-year-old.
Filip Krajinovic has a fair chance of going deep this week if he finds his best form and I’d expect him to have just a bit too much in his game for Hubert Hurkacz.
Over at Delray Beach the only one that raised a slight eyebrow for me was the price of 1.40 about Yosuke Watanuki, who’s been in good form in recent months and qualified well, but that price still looks short against Lukas Lacko.
It’s hard to have any confidence in Lacko, whose effort levels vary week-by-week, but 3.25 is slightly tempting about the Slovak here.
Roberto Carballes Baena vs Nicolas Jarry
On what looks a pretty unappealing day for betting the option I like the most on Monday is to back Jarry to shake off his Davis Cup hangover and produce a performance against RCB in this 19:30 UK time start in Rio.
Jarry has looked a bit flat in recent weeks after leading Chile to a good win away over Austria in the Pique Cup (sorry, Davis Cup) but with 180 points to defend from Rio last year (and 150 next week as well) that should focus his mind.
The tall Chilean has the power on serve and forehand to hit through the often slow and heavy conditions here in Rio and his height helps with the high bouncing ball that we see at this venue.
The same can’t be said of the shorter RCB, whose own serve is rather weak by comparison and when he faced Jarry twice last year on the clay his lack of power was negated by the altitude in Quito and Kitzbuhel (particularly the huge altitude in Quito).
He’ll find it much harder to generate pace here in Rio and he was also struggling with an abdominal issue just a few days ago for which he took some pills (that area was taped up pre-match), so I’m happy to take Jarry in these circumstances.
Later on in Rio I would not be surprised if Thiago Seyboth Wild got off to a good start against Taro Daniel, whose confidence must have been dented by an absolute walloping by Carballes Baena last week.
Seyboth Wild likes to play aggressively and he’ll be very enthusiastic to go well at main level again at a home event after losing out in a final set tie break to Alessandro Giannessi in Cordoba last week.
Daniel may well wear him down in the end but over games or set one to Seyboth Wild could be worth considering.
Dusan Lajovic has had some rough draws in Rio in recent years, but the high bounce should suit his kick serve and he should be too strong for Cameron Norrie, whose Golden Swing hasn’t gone too well so far.
Federico Delbonis is also likely to have too much in these conditions for Malek Jaziri, whose match fitness doesn’t look strong enough to last out a three setter at this level on slow clay at the moment.
Best Bet
0.5 points win Jarry to beat Carballes Baena at 1.74
